Preparation is everything
Before the launch, Robert has read numerous articles, books and case studies on how other authors successfully launched their books, e.g. of internationally successful author Tim Ferris who launched an international bestseller The 4-hour Workweek. Then he gathered all his ideas into his marketing strategy. He didn’t use any programs like Kindle Spy or Kbook promo. Kindle Spy can help you with researching niches on Amazon Kindle, while Kbook promo is more useful in marketing. Rolih’s main aim was to build a personal trademark and increase his value on the market as a public speaker. For a year he was creating the concept of a book, wrote content, got feedback from more than 60 test readers from all over the world, improved content, prepared all the materials for the book with external partners (design, illustrations, caricatures, video trailer, audio book, content for sharing in social media and other). It is interesting that Robert decided for a longer book while the trend on Kindle are short reads (shorter books). Rolih also had a good publisher Rob Kosberg who owns Best Seller Publishing and Rob helped him put together the proper business model for the book and the promotion in USA. Many authors have difficulties deciding on the price for a book and Robert launched the book on Kindle for the price $6.95 for the e-book and $11.95 for the paperback version. With the price Rolih wanted to communicate high value of the book and separate it from low cost and free books.

How to choose a title, description and keywordsIn Rolih’s opinion, choosing a title is one of the most difficult tasks. He spent months thinking about a title and came up with five ideas he thought were good. Then he got the idea for the final title from outside – from one of the fellow public speakers – Daniel Priestley, with whom he had lunch the day after his seminar in Slovenia. When he showed him his options for the title and told him the summary of the book, he thought for a few minutes and then he fired: The Million Dollar Decision. The description is also very important and Rolih advises you to immediately ‘attack’ the reader with the biggest problems the book solves. It can also be in the form of questions. E.g. “Do you get headaches every day?” if you are selling a book with this topic. Then you tell them how they will solve that problem with buying this book. It is also very important before the book release to get some good reviews from readers and use them in the description. Searching for key words Rolih looked for the main search words which appear on Amazon when you start writing in a certain word and then decided on key words according to that.

Book cover Rolih believes the cover is the most important thing in a book. Days and even weeks he polished the cover content and the back cover, and reconsidered every word many times. What will the description on the back cover be, which celebrity’s opinion will appear where and so on. He also had two separate graphic designers who gave him suggestions. In the end, the fantastic version from his USA publisher’s graphic designer won. In the process of choosing the design for his cover he included his Facebook followers who gave him great feedback.

Video trailer and landing page

The video trailer for the book Rolih used mainly on Facebook where he already has over ten thousand views. A part of these views is the consequence of the organic user sharing, and a smaller part was reached with paid ads. He also actively encourages the buyers of the book to share his video content through milliondollardecisionbook.com/share. I have written before about the meaning of landing pages with which, in this case, you explain more about the book. Rolih’s landing page is found at milliondollardecisionbook.com. He had various landing pages for the activities at the book launch.

How to launch the book?
In one day he managed to sell 1.300+ books. I asked him how he went about this and he told me that with a big marketing campaign which was carried out with partners in Slovenia, USA, New Zealand and Great Britain. The basis for the marketing campaign was announcing the book in advance for a longer period of time and building up expectation through email marketing to his list and on social media (mostly Facebook). He gradually revealed how much work and effort went into it, who the beta readers are and what they said about the book, and also asked his followers for their opinions about the book cover (whether they liked version A or B better) and similar. In short, he continually communicated about the book on social media and with the help of email marketing to his customer list. The email list was the foundation according to Rolih in order to make the book a bestseller. In his opinion without an email list and regular communication with it it’s hard to do anything in business today and that 80 percent of all of his results is the consequence of planned building of an email list and regular personal communication. The paid ads Rolih uses are Amazon Advertising for book promotion and Facebook ads, both of which proved effective and services from PR Newswire for the distribution of the public announcement of the book release.

Customer reviewsIt’s getting more difficult to get reviews on Amazon. Rolih believes that reviews are extremely important and it was useful to him that he had beta readers which he had immediately asked for reviews. Additionally, the first readers were excited about the content and were glad to give him reviews. He states that reviews are hard to come by. It took a lot of effort to get to a large number of reviews. He doesn`t use free promotion for his book on Kindle where you offer your book for free up to five days for increasing visibility and improve the position on Amazon (Amazon sales rank). Rolih believes that a book should also have some bad reviews. The important thing is that the majority reviews are 5 stars.

Increasing sales with a bonus package
Then before book release they announced a valuable bonus package for the buyers of the book and asked those who were interested to sign up to a special email list. They communicated intensely with this list on a daily basis up to the release when they directed everyone to Amazon to buy the book. He believes it’s important to give the buyers a special bonus in the period when you want to have many purchases. He offered a discount on the price of the book (50 percent) and a bonus package. In this bonus package was the audio book, a ticket for his 4-hour seminar and his time management audio program. Buyers who bought 5 books also got an additional signed book which was, of course, sent separately. In addition to selling on Amazon they decided to print 5000 copies of the book in Slovenia. These copies were intended for the buyers who bought a pack of 5 books and Robert’s top customers who get the book as a gift with the purchase of one of their other services.